The issue of transfer  that is, relocating Arabs out of
western Eretz Yisrael  to the present day remains very
controversial. The main reason for this is obvious. The vast
majority of Jews considers it to be immoral. The stigma of
immorality attached to this subject is especially troublesome,
because, according to many surveys, more than half of Israeli
Jews supports transfer. Moreover, since the idea of transfer is
considered taboo in Israeli society, it is quite probable that
the actual number of its supporters is much higher, and people
simply do not want to reveal their true opinions, afraid of being
stigmatized.

While Israel prides herself on being a Democracy, the transfer
idea, though supported by the majority of the people, is almost
completely suppressed within the Israeli political conscience. In
spite of the fact that its supporters can be found in many
Israeli political parties, their voices are mute at best. The
champions of the idea, Moledet leaders Benny Elon and Aryeh
Eldad, discuss it mainly on the pages of internal party
publications. No real discussion takes place within the
mainstream Israeli media. It appears that the label
"immoral" has been attached to the term
"transfer" by default, without substantiation, simply
based on the negative connotation of the word. Everything comes
down to the idea that it is immoral to force people to move from
their place of habitation without their consent. The opponents of
transfer always ask, "Would you want to be kicked out of
your home?" Without any doubt, this concern is very
legitimate. And if the supporters of transfer cannot find a
convincing response to it based on moral grounds, it becomes very
difficult, and perhaps impossible, to defend the idea of
transfer.

The inspiration to write this article came from a thorough
reading and re-reading of an absolutely fascinating essay penned
by Ruth Gavison, and published in the summer 5763/2003 issue of
the magazine Azure. Gavison holds the Chaim Cohen chair in human
rights at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and is a senior
fellow at the Israel DemocracyInstitute. The essay is entitled
"The Jews' Right to Statehood: A Defense." Gavison
presents her arguments "framed mainly within the discourse
of human rights," explaining that it is crucial to base the
"justification of a Jewish state on arguments that appeal to
people who do not share the beliefs of those Jews to whom the
Jewish right to a state and to the land of Israel is
axiomatic."

We are going to take a similar approach. It is self-evident
that Jews who unwaveringly believe in the Torah do not need any
additional arguments to support the idea of transferring Arabs
from Eretz Yisrael. At the same time, a great majority of Jews,
though they heed the Torah to a certain extent, still require
justification for the transfer idea based on "universal
moral grounds." Leaving aside the fact that these universal
moral grounds are deeply rooted in Judaic values, which makes the
Torah the main authority on the issue, we will give these Jews
the benefit of the doubt. We will make an argument for the
morality of transfer by making use of many of Gavison's points,
which are "framed mainly within the discourse of human
rights."

To begin with, we take as an axiom the statement that the
Jewish people has the right to statehood and that the
"existence of such a state is an important condition for the
security of its Jewish citizens and the continuation of Jewish
civilization." It seems fair to expect that this statement
should not be questioned even by the most pro-Arab among Jews,
for if they support the Arabs' right to statehood, they must
likewise support this right for the Jews, based on the equality
of fundamental human rights.

Ruth Gavison defines these rights as follows: "as human
beings, we all have a right to life, security, and dignity as
well as to national self-determination." However, while
stressing that the rights to life, security and dignity are not
dependent on anything, Gavison argues that the right to statehood
is not constant. "It instead varies over time and according
to changing circumstances." She states that the claim of
self-determination "is not a matter of abstract rights talk.
Rather, such claims must be addressed according to demographic,
societal and political realities that prevail both in the Middle
East and in other parts of the world."

The same approach must be taken with the issue of transfer. We
must not look at it as "a matter of abstract rights
talk." On the contrary, it is vitally important to take into
account changing circumstances, demographic, societal and
political realities. One of the complicating aspects of the issue
is the subject of a separate Palestinian people. It is easy to
prove that the "Palestinian people" did not exist as
any sort of distinct or cohesive group before the First World
War. Even UN resolution 181, used today by a majorityof liberal
Jews to support the establishment of a Palestinian state, speaks
only about Jews and Arabs and not about Jews and
"Palestinians." Nevertheless, we will assume that there
is indeed a separate people that calls itself
"Palestinians," and claims rights to self-determination
in Eretz Yisrael, which it calls Palestine.

As Gavison explains, it is very important to understand, that
exercising a people's right to self-determination "does not
necessarily depend on establishing a sovereign state." In
her essay, Gavison employs the two distinct terms
"rights" and "liberties," introduced by the
American jurist Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld. "According to
Hohfeld, we may speak of liberty when there is no obligation to
act or refrain from acting in a certain manner. A right, on the
other hand, means that others have an obligation not to interfere
with, or to grant the possibility of, my acting in a certain
manner." Gavison explains that from the start of modern
Jewish settlement in Eretz Yisrael, "as long as their
actions were legal and nonviolent Jewish settlers were at liberty
to enlarge their numbers among the local population, even with
the declared and specific intent of establishing the
infrastructure for a future Jewish state." At the same time,
the Arab population "certainly had full liberty to take
steps to resist this settlement, so long as they did not infringe
on any basic human rights or violate the laws of the land."
It is necessary to re-emphasize the two extremely important
conditions for exercising liberties: nonviolence and the legality
of action based on the laws of the land. Gavison does not bring
up the subject, but, technically speaking, she proves that
Palestine at the beginning of modern Jewish settlement was
"a land without a people." This is because it did not
belong to the people living there. It was under the jurisdiction
of the Ottoman Empire. The laws of the land were Ottoman laws,
which largely curtailed but did not prevent Jewish settlement.
Even more importantly, with the establishment of the British
mandate, the laws of the land under British jurisdiction
encouraged Jewish settlement on the land, thus supporting the
Jews' liberty to settle Palestine.

Since the land did not belong to the locally resident Arabs,
and Palestine was not a separate country with unique laws, the
Arabs had no right to stop Jewish settlement. To put it
differently, from the standpoint of universal morality and
equality, Jews and non-Jews in Palestine were on a level playing
field: the Jews were at liberty to settle the land and the Arabs
were at liberty to oppose this settlement by nonviolent means.

It is worth pointing out that the Arabs were at liberty to
settle the land, as well. Significantly, in contrast to the
Arabs' opposition toJewish settlement, the Jews did not object to
Arab settlement. Thus, as is well documented in various sources,
Arabs from Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria, Bosnia, and
many other countries established their residence in Palestine in
numbers comparable to and even greater than the numbers of Jews
who settled there.

Gavison writes that "changing conditions affect the
balance of legitimacy, and therefore no claim to
self-determination can be absolute." Since the Arabs in
Palestine did not see themselves as a coherent national group and
did not have a separate national identity (at least during the
British Mandate), they made no effort to exercise their right to
self-determination. They had allegiance to their clans or
villages, but never progressed beyond this level. Meanwhile,
without even trying to create a state of their own, they objected
to the establishment of a Jewish one. By negating through
violence the liberties of the Jews to settle in the land, they
violated fundamental Jewish rights to life and security. Gavison
writes,

"Violence clearly was a violation of the rights of the
Jews The violent resistance of the Arabs ultimately lent
significant weight to the Jewish claim to a sovereign state, and
not merely to self-determination within a non-state framework.
From 1920s until today, one of the strongest arguments for Jewish
statehood has been the fact that the security of Jews as
individuals and as a collective cannot be secured without
it."

It is precisely Jewish statehood that always was and still
remains the bone of contention in relations between Arabs and
Jews. All wars fought by the Arabs against the Jews were directed
first against the creation of the Jewish state and then towards
its destruction. Gavison points out that,

"The results of war [1948] brought an end to the symmetry
between Arabs and Jews. Palestinian Arabs did not achieve
statehood, and their communities suffered a major setback, while
Zionism made a critical transition from having the moral liberty
to establish a Jewish state to having a moral right to maintain
it and to preserve its Jewish character."

While pinpointing the extremely important moment for Jews of
transitioning from liberty to create a state to the right to have
and maintain it, Gavison allows for two very significant
inaccuracies. First, the very phrase "did not achieve
statehood" is rather misleading with respect to the
situation of the Palestinian Arabs. It implies that they were
seeking statehood, and were somehow unable to attain it. However,
it is not because anyone prevented them from doing so that the
Palestinians Arabs did not "achieve" statehood in
western Palestine in 1948, but simply because they did not seek
it. This reinforces the factthat the Arabs in Palestine did not
consider themselves a distinct people with a national history,
traditions and goals. The only common ground that united them,
or, to be more precise, united their leaders, was the desire to
prevent the establishment of the Jewish state. Furthermore, it is
not even correct to say that the Palestinian Arabs did not attain
statehood. They attained it in Jordan (77% of the territory of
British Mandate). An overwhelming majority of Jordan's population
consists of Palestinian Arabs, so Gavison is apparently referring
only to Palestinian Arabs living in western Palestine (23% of the
territory of the British Mandate) as having failed to achieve
statehood. Regardless, in the end, it would be more appropriate
to say that, as a result of the 1948 War of Independence, the
Jews finally achieved parity with other nations by reestablishing
their state.

TRANSFER: A MORAL DISCOURSE(Part 2 of 3)
By Boris Shusteff

Now that we have examined the situation during the time of
Israel's creation, let us look at things as they stand today. The
resurrection of the Jewish state and the events of the decades
that followed have drastically changed the situation in western
Palestine. Demographic changes in the region, with the Jewish
state now home to over 5.5 million Jews, have made the Jewish
right to self-determination unquestionable. As Gavison puts it:
"justification for the existence of a Jewish state is
stronger now than it was in 1947 because Israel today hosts
a large and diverse Jewish community with the right to national
self-determination and the benefits that it can bring."
Accordingly "today, Israel has not only the right to exist
but also the right to promote and strengthen its Jewish
character. Indeed, this dramatic shift in the validity of the
Jewish claim to statehood is one of Zionism's major
achievements."

At the same time, despite the increase in the Arab population,
the Arabs' corresponding liberty to settle in western Palestine
cannot be translated into a right to self-determination in Eretz
Yisrael. Numerical growth in population is not by itself a
sufficient argument for this. Especially since the Arabs'
constant use of violence against the Jews continuously violates
Jewish rights to life and safety. Thus, from the standpoint of
universal moral principles, the Arabs are continuously weakening
their claim to the right to self-determination on this land.

Gavison stresses that, "while we cannot ignore the
history of the conflict, neither can we ignore the reality that
has taken hold in intervening years." And this reality
clearly demonstrates that nearly all Palestinian Arab activity
during this time was directed against the Jewish state and not
toward establishing institutions of Arab government, or planting
any seeds for self-rule.

Just the last 10 years have seen an outrageous anti-Semitic
campaign in the Palestinian media and educational institutions
due to the Arabs' stubborn rejection of the legitimacy of the
Jewish state. Violent murders of Jews have become the norm,
supported by nearly 80% of Palestinian Arabs, as every poll
consistently indicates. Hatred against the Jews has penetrated
deep into the souls of several generations of Arabs to whom the
Jews are constantly presented as nothing but ruthless murdering
occupiers. Based on this, reward this sort of attitude among
Arabs with statehood is plainly immoral. Remembering Gavison's
postulate that the Arabs "certainly had full liberty to
[act] so long as they did not infringe on any basic human
rights or violate the laws of the land," one must admit that
the Arabs, incited by their leaders, have miserably failed to
meet even this minimal standard.

Some may argue that the preceding arguments, though valid,
only apply to "Israel proper" as defined by its 1948
borders. We therefore now turn our attention to the reality that
has taken hold in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza (to which we refer by
the Hebrew acronym "Yesha"), the lands that came under
Israel's control after the Six Day War of 1967. Significantly, it
is precisely due to Arab efforts directed toward Israel's
destruction that the Jews have settled on the land that they
gained in 1967, in addition to living in areas they have
controlled since 1948. Just as significantly, there should be
absolutely nothing a priori questionable about settling this
land, since based on universal human rights, the Jews have
exactly the same rights as the Arabs to settle in Western Eretz
Yisrael.

This is supported by the UN Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, which states in article 13 that "everyone has the
right to residence within borders of each state."
Furthermore, article 2 states that for these purposes, the status
of territories does not matter. "No distinction shall be
made on the basis of the status of the country or
territory whether it be independent, trust,
non-self-governing or under any other limitation of
sovereignty." Thus anybody who advocates the liberties of
the Arabs to settle in the disputed lands of western Palestine
must admit that the Jews have exactly the same liberties.
Moreover, the laws of the land give preference to the Jews. The
only existing legitimate international document pertaining to
this disputed land, which is the League of Nations' 1920 San Remo
Declaration, encourages Jewishsettlement there. Israeli laws that
apply to this area do not prohibit settlement, either for Jews or
Arabs.

On balance, then, from the standpoint of international
legitimacy, there is no distinction between most of Israel
"proper" and the disputed lands of Yesha. In both
cases, Jews gained the land after repelling enemy attempts to
destroy the Jewish state. The land obtained by Israel in 1948 was
not under anyone's sovereignty. The lands of Judea and Samaria,
gained by Israel in 1967, were under Jordanian jurisdiction,
which was not recognized by the international community, and was
later waived by Jordan in 1988, thus giving it exactly the same
status as the land acquired by Israel in 1948. A similar
situation exists in the Gaza strip, to which Egypt made even less
claim when it controlled the strip between 1948 and 1967.
Therefore, if it is legitimate for Jews to settle anywhere inside
the area designated by the 1948 armistice lines, it is similarly
legitimate to settle in the areas designated by the 1967
armistice lines, adjusted based on peace agreements with Egypt
and Jordan.

The fact that all of the land now controlled by Israel has the
same status is, ironically, supported by the Arab position as
well. The Arabs typically do not distinguish between the Israeli
conquests of 1948 and 1967. They consider the whole Jewish
enterprise in Palestine, as Gavison puts it, "illegitimate
at its core, since it was harmful to Arab interests and limited
their control over the public domain." However, while
recognizing Arab concerns, Gavison argues that they do not put
moral obligations on the Jews from restraining their settlement
in Eretz Yisrael. She writes:

"The claim that Jewish settlement harmed Arab interests
is certainly understandable, and the fears that lay at its core
were no doubt warranted. But did these fears place a moral
obligation on the Jewish people to refrain from returning to
their homeland?"

The equivalence in status of the lands conquered by Israel in
1948 and 1967 has another extremely important moral aspect that
cannot be ignored. Namely, that it is immoral to reward an
aggressor by restoring the status quo that existed before the
aggression if the aggressor loses territory as a result. Since in
both 1948 and 1967 the land was conquered in defensive wars, it
is just as immoral to demand that Israel give up her rights to
the land conquered in 1967, as it is immoral to demand that she
give up her rights to land conquered in 1948. This effectively
means that on moral grounds the Arabs have no chance whatsoever
of transforming their liberty to live in western Eretz Yisrael
into any sort of right to a state there.

But if the Arabs do not have a right to exercise
self-determination inthe lands of Yesha, we then have an
extremely difficult situation with respect to those Palestinian
Arabs already living there. It is obvious that the present
situation is very volatile, constantly on the brink of explosion,
and must be somehow resolved. This gives only two possible
options: the creation of a separate state for Palestinian Arabs
on part of Yesha, after Israel voluntarily relinquishes her
rights to this land, or the transfer of the Arabs either to
Jordan, where their brethren currently exercise their right to
self-determination, or to any other suitable place in the Arab
world.

Let us first put aside the transfer option and look at the
possibility of creating a state for Palestinian Arabs in Yesha.
Gavison, a proponent of this idea, gives the following
substantiation:

"From a moral point of view, it is preferable to give the
Palestinians national sovereignty over at least part of their
homeland. In this way, the Jewish people's right to
self-determination would not come at the expense of the
corresponding rights of the Palestinians."

This statement is very questionable from the standpoint of
historical accuracy and very difficult to defend on moral
grounds. Eretz Yisrael was never a national home for any people
other than the Jews. The statement that Eretz Yisrael is part of
the "Palestinian homeland" is an exercise in political
correctness and only confuses the issue. One would not, for
example, entertain the idea of giving national sovereignty over a
part of California to Mexican Americans, under the pretext that
it is their homeland because several generations of them were
born there. Meanwhile, one could argue that the Mexicans have
much more right to California then the Palestinian Arabs do to
Eretz Yisrael. At least for 27 years from 1821 to 1848 California
was a sovereign Mexican land, a part of the Mexican state, while
no Palestinian state ever existed in Eretz Yisrael.

On the other hand, what moral right do the Jews have to decide
for the Palestinians over what part of "their homeland"
they should be given sovereignty? If it is indeed the
Palestinians' "homeland" it is they and only they who
have the right to decide on what part of it they want to live.
This sort of patronizing approach is quite clearly immoral in
this case.

And last but most important, if we view Palestine as the
homeland for the Palestinian Arabs, we must not forget that they
have obtained national sovereignty on the greater part of their
homeland more than half a century ago  in Jordan. Thus the
Jewish people exercising their right to self-determination in
Eretz Yisrael by no means comes at the expense of the
corresponding rights of the Palestinians.

As long as we are considering the issue of a possible
Palestinian state, it cannot be discussed without touching on two
other extremely sensitive issues: refugees and Jerusalem. The
Arabs consistently demand part of Jerusalem as the future capital
of their state and demand the right for all "Palestinian
refugees" to return to their "original homes" in
what is now Israel. As Gavison very well explains, Israel cannot
allow Arabs to flood the country, as this will destroy the Jewish
nature of the state. The Jews can refuse to grant this
"right of return" (as well as demand that the Arabs
fulfill certain other conditions) only because they were
victorious in the wars that the Arabs have unleashed on them. To
put it differently, this is an application of the longstanding
international principle of nullum crimen sine poena ("no
crime without punishment." The Arabs certainly should not be
rewarded for their aggression against the Jews by granting them
fictitious "rights." Moreover, is it moral to place an
obligation on the Jewish people to refrain from having access to
the holiest place for the Jews, the Temple Mount? Yet it is clear
that this is exactly what will happen if the Arabs gain
sovereignty in Jerusalem. Even now, when all of Jerusalem is
under Israel's control, Islamic authorities prohibit Jews from
accessing much of the Temple Mount. And what is so often called
"Arab East Jerusalem" is nothing but the very same
Jerusalem for which the Jews longed for 2000 years in exile.

It is clear, then, that the refugees and Jerusalem are two red
lines that cannot be crossed if Israel is to remain a Jewish
state. While the influx of Arab refugees will destroy the Jewish
state demographically, the loss of the Temple Mount and other
parts of authentically Jewish Jerusalem's Old City, will
irreversibly corrode the Jewish soul of the state. The Jewish
state without the Temple Mount is by definition not Jewish.

One more important point must be made - the moral implications
of a Palestinian state in Yesha for the Arabs themselves. It is
clear that for over 50 years, the Arabs' basic rights to life,
safety and dignity have been unceasingly violated by their own
leaders, with the explicit support of the United Nations and the
international community. Arabs are kept in terrible conditions in
the so-called refugee camps. All Israeli attempts to improve
these conditions were rejected by Arab leaders, manipulatively
working through the UN. One need only look at how many Arabs have
been killed as a result of the Intifadas, irresponsibly provoked
by Arab leaders, to agree that Arab rights to safety and life are
utterly neglected. It is to these irresponsible leaders that the
fate of the Palestinian Arabs will be handed, if a Palestinian
Arab state is established in western Eretz Yisrael as a result of
the latest Road Map peace plan.

TRANSFER: A MORAL DISCOURSE
(Part 3 of 3)
By Boris Shusteff

The authors of the Road Map have not only seemingly failed to
consider the moral implication for the Arabs themselves of a
Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza (Yesha) but also
completely disregarded other fundamental issues. One of them is
the viability of such a state. Already in the 1970s, Israeli
Professor Yehoshafat Harkabi, an internationally known expert on
the Arab-Israeli conflict, unequivocally proved in a series of
articles that an Arab state created in Judea and Samaria cannot
be viable. The main reason for this is that this state will need
the support of Arab countries to survive. However, if this state
is created without Jerusalem and if the "right" of the
Arab refugees to settle in Israel is not realized, the Arab
countries will not offer their support to this new artificial
state entity. Perhaps they might recognize it on the surface, but
they will never forgive the Palestinian Arabs for forsaking the
common Arab demand for Jerusalem and the return of the refugees.

Another problem that cannot be resolved is based on the fact
that the national ethos of the so-called "Palestinian
people" has at its core a deeply ingrained belief that the
Jews have forced their miserable fate upon them. This is the
common denominator that gives the "Palestinian people"
their identity and the only real glue that keeps them together.
If an Arab state is created in Yesha with the refugee issue left
unresolved, the schism between different groups of Palestinian
Arabs will only exacerbate the current situation. Undeniably,
with the establishment of an Arab state in the disputed
territories and the disappearance of the "return
option," no Arab Palestinian leader will be able to suggest
any satisfactory, practicable alternative to 3 to 4 million
"refugees." Indeed, though, as we mentioned before, the
return of the refugees is a red line which Israel cannot cross,
it's nevertheless clear that finding some resolution of the
refugee problem must preempt, or go hand in hand, with any
discussion of a Palestinian state.

At the same time, the entirety of Judea, Samaria and Gaza,
which the Arabs demand for their state, encompasses only about
two thousand square miles. It is roughly twice the size of Rhode
Island, one of the smallest states in the US, which, with one
million people, has the second highest population density of any
US state. The current population density in Gaza is already 720%
higher than Rhode Island's, and with a far inferior standard of
living. Given the right and opportunity to settle in an Arab
state created in Yesha, the Palestinian Arabs will certainly
never exercise this right in large numbers. This is simply
because no one will voluntarily move from a living situation that
is already bad to one that is much worse.

This means that a huge fraction of the "Palestinian
people" will remain in a state of limbo, with at least 3 to
4 million Palestinian Arabs retaining refugee status and
remaining completely dissatisfied. No help is likely to come from
neighboring Arab countries. To expect that they will voluntarily
absorb the Palestinian Arabs living among them after so many
years of refusing their integration is merely na?ve. These
countries have kept the Palestinian Arabs into these degrading
conditions quite intentionally. There will be no new incentives
for Arab leaders to deal with these unfortunate people, who are
not even their citizens in the first place. This means that their
plight will become even more pitiful, and their resentment will
only grow, since Arab anti-Israeli incitement is unlikely to
stop. It is not hard to predict that in such a situation,
vengeful feelings will remain strong: "the villains that
expelled us from our homeland achieved safety, and we must
continue living in hell?" Just as Arafat's PLO was created
in order to help "Palestinians return to their
homeland," in this situation another Arafat will quickly
emerge to create a new PLO (assuming that the old one ceases to
exist) to demand rights for the refugees. His logic will be very
simple: if it was appropriate to allow the return of the
Palestinians to an area that was captured by Israel in 1967, it
should be just as appropriate to allow the Palestinians to return
to the area captured by Israel in 1948.

It is easy to conclude that the creation of a
"Palestinian state" in Judea, Samaria and Gaza without
resolving the issue of the "Palestinian refugees" is a
certain recipe for disaster. We must answer, from a common moral
perspective, why the fate of some of these people must be so much
different from others? Why can the two million Arabs in Judea and
Samaria (not counting "refugees" in Gaza) have their
right to self-determination satisfied while 3 to 4 million others
will not? To say that these 3 to 4 million Arabs have this right
fulfilled, since they will be able to settle in Judea and Samaria
does not work. By the same reasoning, it can be said that these
people can exercise their right to self-determination right now
in Jordan, the majority of whose people are Palestinian Arabs.
There is no logic that can support the premise that the
"right" to move into Judea, Samaria or Gaza to live in
squalid conditions under a corrupt Palestinian leadership is
somehow preferable to moving into Jordan, to live a relatively
normal life. And if it is legitimate and sensible to relocate 3
to 4 million Arabs toJordan, what is wrong with relocating 1 or 2
million additional Arabs there?

What is important is that no one has ever conducted any polls
in order to determine which option the Palestinian Arabs
themselves would prefer: Jordan or Yesha. While their leaders,
certainly insist on the latter and more, demanding the right to
return to Israel proper, the actions of the Palestinians speak
volumes. Over a million Arabs living in Gaza did not even try to
settle in Judea and Samaria during the height of Palestinian
Administration in the 1990s, instead preferring to rot in the
refugee camps in the hope that they will "return to their
homes in Israel." Clearly, Yesha itself is not a major
attractor. This indicates that the rhetoric from all sides
calling for Arab sovereignty in Yesha does not reflect the real
desires of the Arabs themselves. How, then, can we make a
judgment about the morality of the transfer option? The
dictionary defines "moral" as "relating to,
dealing with, or capable of making the distinction between right
and wrong in conduct." So if something is right  it is
moral, and if it is wrong  immoral. Is it therefore not
absurd to use statements like "I want this and that" or
"I want it here and now" as the chief measure of the
morality of an issue? Yet, this is what objectors to transfer do
when they claim that transfer is immoral because it goes against
what the Palestinian Arabs "want" (and we have also
already seen that it's at best unclear where exactly they want to
live). In order to truly judge the moral aspects of transfer one
should ask: "Is it right or wrong to move people from their
homes in this particular situation?" To answer this
question, it is clear that the mere desires of some people to
live in certain places are not sufficient in and of themselves
for a moral judgment on the issue of their relocation. All other
considerations must be taken into account as well. We can
analogously ask if it is moral to relocate thousands of people
living next to a volcano, in spite of their desires to stay put,
knowing that an eruption is inevitable. Obviously, the act of
relocation would certainly be right, because it would save many
lives, and therefore would be a moral action. It is noteworthy
that if the stubborn volcano-dwellers remain where they are, they
harm no one but themselves, whereas leaving the Palestinians
where they are is likely to harm not only them, but the Jews
living in Israel as well  therefore making transfer an even
greater moral imperative in the latter situation. Thus, if the
relocation of Arabs allows the resolution of the conflict between
Arabs and Jews, it is certainly moral, since it is right and long
overdue to bring the conflict to an end.

When we consider all of these issues, before insisting on the
establishment of an Arab state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, we
must honestly answer what good it will bring to the Middle East
equation.Even in the most optimistic scenario, it is extremely
uncertain that it will indeed lead to any sort of stable or
peaceful resolution of the conflict. Conversely, it is easy to
answer what harm it will bring. First, it will restore a state of
great vulnerability for Israel, which will lose all of its
strategic depth. Second, the new Arab state itself will be not
only unviable (see this author's article on "The Stillborn
Palestinian State") but also will have no chance of gaining
support from other Arab countries, since, as we have already
determined, Israel cannot yield on the red-line issues of
refugees and Jerusalem and give up its Jewish essence. And one
must remember that it is not only Arafat and Abu Mazen who insist
on the return of the refugees and demand part of Jerusalem. It is
also Mubarak, King Saud, King Abdullah, Assad and all the other
Arab leaders. Third, the issue of "Palestinian
refugees," will not move any closer to resolution, leaving 3
to 4 million people in a forlorn state without any hope for a
better future. Fourth, the real cause of the conflict, which is
the failure of the Arab states to recognize Israel's right to
exist, will not disappear. The Arabs will cling to it with tooth
and nail, using as a pretext the same refugees whom they will
keep in misery themselves.

Many of those familiar with the Arab-Israeli conflict maintain
that international involvement is key for resolving the
situation. Thus far, however, the involvement of the
international community has only exacerbated the current problem.
Instead of encouraging the resettlement of the refugees, an
approach that has proved successful with about one hundred
million other people all over the world, the UN, via UNRWA has
only helped to keep the problem alive. The only Arab country that
accepted the Palestinian Arabs more or less willingly was Jordan.
Even recently, after the 1991 Gulf War, Kuwait expelled 300,000
Palestinian Arabs, who found refuge in Jordan without a problem,
which is quite understandable, since Jordan is a Palestinian Arab
state. At the same time, it is unrealistic to expect that Jordan
will voluntarily agree to accept millions of destitute people.
The involvement of the international community is therefore
simply a must, despite the poor track record up to now. And
progress can only be made if major players, such as the US, EU,
Russia, China, Japan or at least some of them, officially
proclaim the truth that has been hidden for fifty years, namely
that Jordan is the Palestinian state.

As always, declarations alone are not enough, and must be
followed by corresponding policy decisions. Once this is done,
the road will be wide open for the "refugees" to settle
in Jordan and the word "transfer" will lose its
negative connotation, since the world community will be involved
in a decent and honorable task  the transfer of Palestinian
Arabs from the misery of refugee camps and the abuses of their
leaders to a life of hope and freedom.

The participation of the international community will also be
needed in order to shield Jordan from the rage of other Arab
countries, which will be the major obstacle on the road to the
successful resettlement of Palestinian Arabs. For fifty-five
years the policies of the Arab countries have been aimed at
keeping the Palestinian Arabs in camps in order to use them as a
powerful weapon in the war against Israel. It is obvious that
they will object to such a solution and the international
community will need to demonstrate resolve and forcefulness to
make this happen. Certainly this will not be a task of one month
or even one year. A long-term plan must be developed to prevent
the ruin of the Jordanian economy. Infrastructure and housing
should be built up-front, and proper conditions should be
established for the employment of future citizens. The
construction boom that will precede resettlement, will positively
resolve the unemployment problem currently being faced by
Jordanians. This will also provide an opportunity for Arabs in
Judea, Samaria and Gaza to obtain employment. At the same time,
if Jordan is officially recognized as a Palestinian state, the
Arabs of Judea, Samaria and Gaza will be able to settle there as
well. This means that the fate of two thousand square miles of
land will automatically become a non-issue. The Palestinian Arabs
will not need it to exercise their right to self-determination,
which will enable Israel to annex it through a process of
international recognition, thus obtaining the minimal strategic
depth it requires, which will serve as the best guarantee of
stability and peace in the region.

No one will argue that the resettlement of the Arabs will not
be accompanied by substantial hardships, but is it not an
honorable task for the world community to actively work to bring
millions of people out of misery and give them real hope for the
future? (Instead of clamoring for the emergence of a stunted and
crippled state, knowing fully that this state will offer no
chance for improving Palestinians' lives or bringing peace to the
region.)

From the perspective of human rights, the alternatives are
immeasurably worse. In order to create an Arab state in Judea,
Samaria and Gaza, it will be necessary to resettle nearly 500,000
Jews living there, including Jerusalem. This is because when
Arabs speak of Israel abandoning "all the lands occupied in
1967," they mean Jerusalem too. The Jews that will have to
be relocated are well established in the places where they
currently live. It is utterly immoral and illogical to ruin
people's lives based on "abstract rights talk." And
precisely because the vast majority of the Palestinian Arabs
haven't been given the opportunity to build lives for themselves
anywhere, including Judea, Samaria and Gaza, it is possible to
relocate them without great difficulty. The alternative is an
ever-increasing number of poor and miserable people with no
opportunity to create their own future. Whatkind of morality is
it to multiply the number of suffering people, instead of
decreasing it?

As Gavison stressed several times in her article, we cannot
ignore the reality that has taken hold in the intervening years.
The refugee problem, the misery of the Palestinian Arabs, the
Jews living in over 150 locations in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are
all the consequences of Arab attempts to destroy Israel. The
latest indiscriminate terror war, unleashed by Arafat in 2000,
has only added tragedy to both sides, while Jewish settlement on
Jewish land has continued unabated in spite of the hardships.
Since these attempts to destroy Israel have persisted for more
than fifty years, it is critical that the vengeful ideas that
have driven the Arabs' relations with Israel be abolished once
and for all. This cannot be done through nice words or merely by
signing agreements. Only facts established on the ground can make
this happen. Therefore, by recognizing Israel's sovereignty over
Judea, Samaria and Gaza, the international community will send
the clear message that the disputes over a meager 2,000 square
miles of land, are finally over. It is ridiculous to believe that
the Arabs, having 2,000,000 square miles of land, will settle all
of their arguments with Israel, if they are given 2,000
additional square miles. At the same time, by recognizing Jordan
as a Palestinian state, a path will be laid for the resolution of
the refugee problem that has been a stain on mankind's moral
conscience for fifty -five years. The alternative is simply a
continuation of the old rule of enmity and hatred - an admission
of the moral degradation of the human species.

07/17/03

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Boris Shusteff is an engineer. He is also a research
associate with the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies.